| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: your death. If you attain this certainty, you have touched the value
of your intellectual capital, on which the cost of insurance is but a
trifle,--a mere trifle, a bagatelle."
"That's a fine idea!"
"Ah! is it not, Monsieur?" cried Gaudissart. "I call this enterprise
the exchequer of beneficence; a mutual insurance against poverty; or,
if you like it better, the discounting, the cashing, of talent. For
talent, Monsieur, is a bill of exchange which Nature gives to the man
of genius, and which often has a long time to run before it falls
due."
"That is usury!" cried Margaritis.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: or seeming at all interested in the subject, I did not like--
I thought it would appear as if I wanted to set myself
off at their expense, by shewing a curiosity and pleasure
in his information which he must wish his own daughters
to feel."
"Miss Crawford was very right in what she said of you
the other day: that you seemed almost as fearful of notice
and praise as other women were of neglect. We were talking
of you at the Parsonage, and those were her words.
She has great discernment. I know nobody who distinguishes
characters better. For so young a woman it is remarkable!
Mansfield Park |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: simply standing there in silence with level gaze fixed upon
the Jed of Zodanga. And I doubt not that my expression
was coloured by the contempt I felt for the man.
The eyes of those within the chamber were fixed first upon
me and then upon Zat Arras, until finally a flush of anger
crept slowly over his face.
"You may go," he said to those who had brought me,
and when only his two companions and ourselves were left
in the chamber, he spoke to me again in a voice of ice--
very slowly and deliberately, with many pauses, as though
he would choose his words cautiously.
The Gods of Mars |
